The Tate Britain museum in London will return a seventeenth-century painting to the family of a Jewish Belgian art collector. The artwork had been taken from his home during the German occupation in the Second World War. The return was advised by the Spoliation Advisory Panel, the British government’s restitution committee.
The restitution committee says the 1654 artwork, ‘Aeneas and his Family Fleeing Burning Troy’ by English painter Henry Gibbs, was “looted as an act of racial persecution”. Samuel Hartveld’s heirs and great-grandchildren will receive the work, which the art collector left behind in Antwerp in May 1940 when he and his wife fled Belgium, the British government said on Saturday.
“This decision clearly acknowledges the awful Nazi persecution of Samuel Hartveld”
Hartveld survived the war but never saw his collection again. It was suspected that most of the works were in galleries across Europe. Tate bought Gibbs’ work from Galerie Jan de Maere in Brussels in 1994, after Antwerp resident René Van de Broek bought the collection and Hartveld’s house for a “paltry sum”.
In May 2024, the Sonia Klein Trust, which bears the name of the foundation’s founder, the daughter of Hartveld’s widow, filed a claim. In a press release, the trustees say they are “deeply grateful” for the decision to return the work. “This decision clearly acknowledges the awful Nazi persecution of Samuel Hartveld,” they state.
Tate’s director Maria Balshaw said it was a “profound privilege to help reunite this work with its rightful heirs”. “Although the artwork’s provenance was extensively investigated when it was acquired in 1994, crucial facts concerning previous ownership of the painting were not known,” she added. “We now look forward to welcoming the family to Tate in the coming months and presenting the painting to them.”
Contribution Flemish journalist
The Sonia Klein Trust also thanked Geert Sels, writer and journalist of Flemish newspaper De Standaard. Sels went looking for Nazi-looted art from Belgium in the book ‘Kunst voor das Reich’ and thus revealed the Hartveld case.
In a new article in De Standaard, the journalist points out that another piece from Hartveld’s collection will be auctioned in Vienna at the end of April. Moreover, there is still the painting ‘Portrait of Bishop Antonius Triest’ by Antwerp painter Gaspar de Crayer claimed at the Museum of Fine Arts of Ghent. That is a matter for an ad hoc committee that the city of Ghent has now set up, because Belgium does not yet have a restitution committee or elaborate guidelines.
